The Enforcement Directorate on Monday arrested Deepak Kochhar, the husband of former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar in connection with a money laundering case between the bank and the Videocon Group, reported ANI. Kochhar was questioned since Monday afternoon before he was arrested at night, according to NDTV.
Kochhar will be taken to an anti-money laundering court on Tuesday, the news agency said.
The investigating agency had filed a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act last year against Kochhar, her husband, and Videocon Group’s Managing Director Venugopal Dhoot. The ED has also been investigating at least two other instances of loans by ICICI Bank during Chanda Kochhar’s term. One of them was given to Gujarat-based pharmaceutical firm Sterling Biotech and another to Bhushan Steel Group.
Chanda Kochhar resigned in October after questions were raised about a Rs 3,250-crore loan that the bank had given the Videocon group in 2012. Six months after the loan was sanctioned, Dhoot allegedly provided crores of rupees to NuPower, a firm controlled by Deepak Kochhar. The CBI on January 27 filed a case against the Kochhars, Dhoot, and others, after carrying out searches at the headquarters of Videocon Group in Mumbai and its offices in Aurangabad, and offices of NuPower. The CBI has alleged that the accused sanctioned the loans to private companies in a criminal conspiracy with others in order to cheat the private lender.
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